


my endless blue

by kyoonglights



Category: EXO (Band), Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23481763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyoonglights/pseuds/kyoonglights
Summary: she was all the hues he would never be able to name.
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene & Kim Junmyeon | Suho, Bae Joohyun | Irene/Kim Junmyeon | Suho
Comments: 1
Kudos: 42





	my endless blue

She wore blue the day they met; a colour he’s been seeing a lot. It was a pretty ruffly thing, sheer but not see-through, airy. She was calling out to someone, waving her hands high with a bright smile on her face. Maybe it wasn’t a smile—maybe it’s just that she’s radiant. She was waving to him. Maybe it wasn’t him—maybe someone in front of him. He averted his eyes and turned his back to her again, and continued walking.

But a flash of blue emerged in the corners of his eyes and she, too, bright rosy cheeks and small berry smile amidst the blue.

“Excuse me,” she said with a small smile. “You dropped this.”

She handed him his pathetic excuse of a wallet, an old thing made from blue denim, now faded and soft to the touch after wear, the seams getting a little loose. He felt his heart drop and relief bubbling in a matter of seconds as he reflexively flipped his backpack to the front, finding the front zipper more than half open.

“Oh—I—god, thank you,” he told her. It didn’t have a lot in it, but it did have pictures. Pictures of days where there were less blue, and more yellow, green, pink and red, though they were hidden behind the sleek blacks of his cards. “Thank you so much. I didn’t realise I dropped it, where did..?”

“Not far behind, but you’re a very fast walker,” she told him. “Be careful next time.”

He didn’t have half the mind to ask for anything about her except saying another round of thank-you; she walked off in the opposite direction with what he would have thought as a last smile, then, her long hair falling down her back, black between the blue. She was a fast walker too.

+

She didn’t wear blue the next time they met, but he couldn’t forget her blue blouse. His thoughts had scarcely wandered to her during the period where he thought they would remain strangers forever, but when it did he thought of her as the girl with the blue blouse. She was wearing white, a long-sleeved, loose white shirt half tucked-in in her light blue jeans. He forgot she was radiant and beautiful, the girl in blue.

“Oh!” She exclaimed.

He bowed slightly and she returned the gesture. Words were lost between them for a moment. She was Joohyun. She was the art teacher in the youth arts centre. He had just been accepted as a piano teacher.

“So last time you were going back home from the interview?” Joohyun asked. He nodded and smiled. “Well, welcome.”

“Thank you,” he said again, like last time, before she walked away.

+

Joohyun wore pink when they first spend time outside the confines of the arts centre, where their interactions were limited to smiles and _hi_ and short bows in the small hallways and the break room. She taught younger children, under ten, kids whose parents wanted to give them a happy after-school activity as they work and he taught younger children, too, kids whose parents wanted to launch prodigies. She was always pretty and elegant and bright with the children and he would try, to a limited success, to be too.

She usually went home before him, but his last student was sick and didn’t come and they ran to each other as he walked out, and he had asked, out of courtesy, if she was going home. She said no.

“Have you heard of the o2?” She asked, and Junmyeon shook his head. “That’s a new cafe not far from here, my friend was the one who told me about it but she bailed, stumped at work.”

“If you want to go there with company, I have time,” he’d said, surprising even himself, but he quickly retreated back. “I mean, unless you and your friend rescheduled.”

Joohyun had barely contemplated before smiling and agreeing him to go; her pink blouse matching the rose of her smile. The cafe had been a minimalistic, hip kind of thing, not one he care much about, but they sat in front of a wide expanse of white wall and spent time talking, getting to know each other as if in the middle of some sort of a date. She had a sweet tooth—she got a sickeningly sweet-looking beverage, and he could see the faint stain of blue paint, blue crayon, on her palms. He hadn’t complained. It was nice to admire her from this close.

+

Their first date was overdue. At least that was what his friends and their colleagues claimed. Junmyeon supposed it was a little bit obvious on his part, often peeking idly into her small classroom to see her help young children paint and play with colours in-between his own private classes.

She would have a kind and patient smile on her face as she moved from her easel to her students’, often having to hold paint-stained things until her hands were smeared with an array of colours. He never saw her hesitate to touch the colours. She never became mad when her students accidentally smeared a small stroke of paint on her clothes. He would wave at her when she noticed and smiled at him at the window and went on his way, as if he just passed by. He had been caught multiple times by his older, senior colleagues that he did not just passed by. Subtlety had never been his forte anyways.

He asked her if she would like to go to the aquarium. She asked him if he meant in a date. He said yes. She hadn’t hesitated.

Joohyun wore white, a feminine off-shoulder thing that made him somewhat sure along the way he’d take his jacket off for her to wear. She was beautiful, as usual, wearing her hair down to one side, and he thought the cold of his hands weren’t because of the cold aquarium.

“Do you think it’s childish to go here?” He asked her, because he had pondered for a long time where to take her to before ultimately deciding to go here. He had expected her to say no, or at least, ask why.

“We teach children,” she laughed, “if I thought so, I wouldn’t be here, Junmyeon.”

“Why did you agree to go?” He asked out of curiosity. It had been easy talking to her, had been honest. It wasn’t hard to be upfront with Joohyun. He liked it, liked her.

“Why shouldn’t I?” She asked him back, sounding as genuinely curious as he had been. “It sounds really fun to go here with you. And it is.”

The makeshift sea behind the glass had casted a cold glow on her white blouse, the reflection of the waves gently shifting on her face. The endless blue should made him feel like he’s deep beneath the water, but he felt like he’s on cloud nine.

+

He kissed her in a movie theatre, just as the couple they hadn’t paid much attention to kissed on the large screen, the notion clichéd and feeling like a teenage love, but he had felt like a teenaged boy anyways. She tasted like sweet coffee that she drunk with cream prior, and he worried if he tasted like the caramel popcorn they had been eating but she kissed him back, and he felt the knot in his chest loosens and he could breathe again. He could barely see her blue sweater in the dark of the cinema but he could feel the soft fleece grazing his fingers as he lifted his hand to touch her face.

She smiled when they pulled away, much faster than the couple falling onto their couch on the screen, and held his cold hands as she leaned her head on his shoulder. It felt right, it felt relieving, like a weight had been lifted off his chest. Joohyun had laughed softly on his shoulder, the chuckle a gentle shake as she buried her laugh on his checkered jacket.

“What?” He whispered, though he was grinning.

“This was just an excuse wasn’t it,” she said to his ear, “we didn’t pay attention to the movie, did we.”

“I did,” he said cheekily to her, “if I didn’t I couldn’t have timed the kiss.”

Joohyun laughed quietly again, and slipped her hands beneath his arm, snaking her own arm around his so she cuddled up to him.“Should we watch how their ending would be?”

Junmyeon had mulled the thought over for barely a split second, before pulling her hand down into his hold again. “No,” he told her, smiling, “should we work towards ours instead?”

She beamed at him and they stood up from their seats, walking out hand-in-hand, then arm-in-arm, then in a half embrace. Her blue sweater was still soft as he held her by the waist, but her cold cheek felt softer as he ducked to land her another kiss.

+

She moved into his life fluidly, each step like a stroke of colour to a blank canvas to slowly take shape of bursts of colour. Joohyun was loud, was strange, was sweet and caring, and had a boisterous laugh and a weird sense of humour—she laughed at his jokes, and not a lot of his friends did; the dad jokes he always had a useless penchant on, she liked them. She was neat but didn’t mind that he was messy, she was a great cook and didn’t mind that he sucked, she was bright and yet she was sarcastic.

She had a lot of clothes that had small paint stains but she didn’t mind; she didn’t play the piano but she had a perfect pitch. She smelled of paint and yet she smelled like flowery musk. She spent day offs without a single clue of the time save for the light from the window of his living room, where next to it she set up an easel to paint things she was asked to paint or things she wanted to paint on her own. She filled his apartments with canvases and easels and colours but it never looked neater, never looked better.

She liked to paint as he played the piano, and that day he had been doing so; it was a Sunday, March 29; it was her birthday. He held a small surprise for her in the morning and took her so that her friends could surprise her in the afternoon; she had been radiant and happy and he was, too.

She was wearing his large, red-and-black checkered flannel that he was sure would become another one of his clothes to be stained with paint. She was painting a whimsical painting of a cake, fitting to the occasion, the pink and white of the frosting looked as sickeningly sweet as she was. Her hair was up in a messy knot, strands falling down her neck. Her hands were stained pink, but he remembered a time when he knew of her as the girl in blue.

The roses he got her were standing in a vase above his piano, a lovely bunch.

“Why’d you stop?” She asked him after he stopped playing for a while. “Junmyeon?”

She wanted to turn but he beat her to it, coming behind her and bending down to give her an embrace and a kiss on her cheek. “Because,” he said slowly, retreating back and gently pulling her to turn to him. He got down on one knee and pulled a ring—a white gold band with a sun in the centre; petite but bright and beautiful, like her. “I wanted to wish you happy birthday.”

Joohyun paused for a second and put her brush down. She had looked composed, but she was smiling, and her cheeks flushes a shade of pink deeper than the cake behind him. “Just happy birthday?” She asked.

“No,” he said, grinning, despite the thunderous hammering in his chest. “Will you marry me?”

Joohyun was quiet, then, and he was overcame with a worry he hadn’t thought he’d feel. “Depends,” she said softly, and it almost made his one knee give way. “Do you mind if the ring is stained with paint?”

He said _huh_ , then, like an idiot, while Joohyun’s smile grew bigger. “No, I don’t,” he told her.

“Well, I do,” she grinned, “I mean yes, that one’s the answer for later. Yes.”

She took the ring and put it on a small expanse of unstained surface of her table, not putting it on, but she leaned down to cup his cheeks and kiss him, and Junmyeon could feel the sticky paint on his cheek but he couldn’t care less. They stood and he kissed her back and as it deepened he could feel his chest free, he felt that he could breathe. She was red in his shirt and pale off it, and pink and rosy but he could remember still, when he closed his eyes, the hue from when to him, she was just the girl in blue.

He loved her, every single bit of her, her dark hair and her berry smile and her rosy cheeks, her dark shining eyes and her pale dainty hands, warm and stained with paint. She was his, his very own rainbow of colours he’d never be able to name, his endless blue.

+

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed this short fluff!! stay inside, stay healthy, stay safe, and lastly don't forget to support junmyeon's self portrait <33  
> before you say aquarium, again?! yes i love aquarium dates i really do its calming and nice and fun and definitely healing!!


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